


dove-white profile

by headlong



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 16:43:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21305273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headlong/pseuds/headlong
Summary: One quiet moment, on one wartime afternoon.
Relationships: Hibiki Wataru/Ran Nagisa
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	dove-white profile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phant0m](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phant0m/gifts).

> for phan, who offered up many oddball rarepairs and let me choose how to best snipe him

Wataru’s favourite dove is missing.

She’s not in the theatre club room, or by the fountain, or on the rooftop, or in the eaves of the garden terrace. Those are all of her usual roosts, and he’s completely stumped as to where else she might be. And, when he’d poked his head into 1-A to try rope Hokuto into helping, his junior had insisted that he hadn’t seen her, that he was busy, and furthermore, that he still couldn’t tell any of Wataru’s birds apart anyway.

And, with Hokuto excusing himself on some business or another, help is in worryingly short supply. Wataru is maybe the only Oddball who still comes to school regularly, even though he mostly just cuts class and knocks around in the auditorium. Rei’s been going overseas more and more, with less and less notice, sometimes only remembering to contact him when he’s already in Britain or Russia or Peru; Kanata can sometimes be found in the marine bio room, but only on a good day; Shu’s just about vanished completely. And Natsume’s around, more often than the rest, but he’s always sequestered in that secret room of his, and most of the time he doesn’t even answer when Wataru knocks.

All in all, he’s not in the greatest of moods. Especially since it’s been one thing after another, ever since Valkyrie lost. Most of the campus is deserted, which doesn’t surprise him this late in the afternoon. Less and less people have been going to class lately, let alone their extracurriculars, and rumour has it some of them have even dropped out. Wataru can’t blame them for it; the very air at Yumenosaki feels heavy and oppressive, difficult to breathe. He’s only here because sitting at home would, somehow, only make him feel worse.

He checks his classroom, again. The garden terrace, again. The lee of the building near the light music room. All are to no avail. And he’s pacing restlessly down the second-floor hallway, just about to give up and let her return whenever she wishes, when he catches a flash of white from the courtyard below.

That makes him stop in his tracks, and he backpedals and presses his face to the glass. He isn’t hallucinating: his dear Ophelia is there, perched on the hand of a student he recognises, but can’t quite put a name to. A fellow second-year, with hair that, in the late summer sunlight, looks almost the same colour as his dove’s plumage.

Wataru doesn’t hesitate. He opens the window, throws himself out of it, rolls to break the impact of his landing, and pops up in the middle of the courtyard with a flourish. “Good afternoon, my classmate! I see you’ve found yourself in possession of something important to me.”

Ophelia, the beautiful and well-trained creature that she is, doesn’t startle. Interestingly, though, his classmate doesn’t seem to either. Golden eyes fix on him, slow and deliberate. There’s definitely surprise there, of a sort, but it’s so… detached. As if he won’t let himself be surprised, or doesn’t know how to process the fact that he is.

“...She’s yours?”

Hearing him speak brings a lot of things back all at once. It’s a familiar voice, for the worst reasons: he remembers it from Valkyrie’s live, from behind a door backstage at Rei’s most recent performance, from the time he’d wandered into the marine bio room looking for Kanata and found him engaged in a muted argument. But Wataru can’t, for the life of him, put a name to that quiet, unsure cadence.

(It doesn’t help that they’ve never spoken much, even though they’re in the same class this year. Probably because this pale boy is nearly always with Tomoe Hiyori, infrequent rival and eternal thorn in Wataru’s side, who talks enough for the two of them. But Wataru prides himself on being able to hold a conversation with just about anyone, even if he admittedly doesn’t know what to call them.)

Covering for that fact, he strikes a dramatic pose: contorting himself backwards, one hand splayed over his face. “She most certainly is. You find yourself in the presence of my darling Ophelia, favourite of all my doves, and most bosom of my friends!”

“Her name is… Ophelia?”

“I admit, I wasn’t sure at first myself. I worried, when I chose it for her, that naming her after a tragic heroine might bode terribly in the future. But what is life if not a dazzling tragicomedy? Come what may, at least she’ll bear a grand fate.”

“Ophelia,” the boy repeats. The dove turns one dark eye to him. “She recognises her name?”

“She does! Birds are much cleverer than people think, you know. They come when called, and they can learn to do tricks, as well as any dog or cat. But, since we’re on the subject of names: I’m most terribly sorry, my dear classmate, but I don’t appear to remember yours!”

“...Ran Nagisa. Don’t worry if you can’t remember it.”

Wataru twists himself back to normal. “Rest assured I will fix it most solidly in my mind!”

“And you’re… Ah. I’ve… forgotten yours, too.”

It’s strange; coming from anyone else, that would have been rude. But from Nagisa, it comes off as something that’s genuinely slipped his mind, the same way he might forget to bring his homework to school, or to take an umbrella with him in the rainy season. As if it’s simply something of no consequence to him.

“Hibiki Wataru, of course! Captain of the theatre club, fellow member of class 2-B, friend to all doves, and aspiring idol.”

_ Oddball_, he doesn’t say. Just because they can’t remember each others’ names doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten that.

Nagisa’s lips purse as he thinks. “...You’re talking to me.”

“Of course I am. You and I are classmates.”

“But I’m… your enemy.”

“On stage, certainly. But now? I’m sure it might raise some eyebrows, if we were to be seen together like this, but I don’t mind. My dear Ophelia has an excellent sense for people, after all. She certainly wouldn’t waste her time on someone with no redeeming features.”

“I don’t understand.”

Wataru has to chew over how to answer that, skewered by the curious gazes of Nagisa and Ophelia. Because he has many answers, ranging in length from a few syllables to entire essays about drama and thematic resonance and pathos, but the most satisfying one might reveal too much of himself. In the end, he chooses something of a middle ground. “Being an Oddball is just another role I’ve been cast to play, I suppose. But you and I aren’t onstage at the moment; we’re simply milling around backstage together, waiting for our cue to be called forward. Why wouldn’t I speak to a fellow performer in this grand Yumenosaki drama?”

“This is… a play, to you?”

“Of sorts. At the very least, the leader of fine seems to think of it as a story being performed for the masses.”

“...That’s interesting. I… hadn’t thought about it like that. Because the others… your friends… don’t seem to agree. Or… they’d never speak to me, at least.”

“Just because we’re all Oddballs doesn’t mean we’re the same.”

“No. I… I know. I’m not the same as the other members of fine… either.”

Wataru doesn’t have much to do with those three, at least outside of participating in lives against them, but he isn’t surprised to hear it. Hiyori and Nagisa are like night and day, their contrasting personalities all the more obvious for the time they spend together. He’s spoken to Aoba Tsumugi a couple of times, briefly, usually on his way to Natsume’s hideout. And he had glimpsed Tenshouin Eichi, once, back before any of this had started, sitting on the edge of the school’s fountain, on a warm spring day. He had seemed so pale as to be ephemeral, the spirit of someone long since departed. Then, startlingly, Eichi had glanced up and made eye contact with him, jolted by the feeling of someone else’s gaze; but it had been Eichi who seemed embarrassed, even though he hadn’t been the one caught staring. Wataru, driven by some bizarre impulse, had waved. And Eichi had stood and dusted himself off, back straight and jaw set and shoulders rigid, and paced into the school building.

(The next time he had seen Eichi, it had been at the live where he had crushed Shu completely. And though they had passed each other in the wings backstage, Wataru hurrying to his friend’s side and Eichi on his way out, they had barely even looked at each other.)

“I never assumed that you were.”

Nagisa extends a tentative hand, strokes Ophelia with the back of his fingers. She preens under the touch. “...All that aside. I’m… glad I got to speak to you. If I’m being honest… I’ve been curious about you… for a long time.”

“Oh? Are you my fan?”

“Not that. But… it seems to me… that if things had gone differently. Maybe we would have talked more.”

He has an incredibly,  _ incredibly _ bad feeling about this line of conversation. But Hibiki Wataru isn’t meant to be someone who backs down. “If you hadn’t encountered an old friend when you came to Yumenosaki, and been forced to pick your way through this teenage social battleground? Perhaps that’s true. Perhaps we might have become friends, living out our high-school slice-of-life dreams at each other’s side!”

“...Not that, either.”

“Then speak plainly. I can’t presume to guess what’s on your mind, and I can’t bear this impossible tension.”

“I.” Nagisa looks down as he thinks, but then glances up with startling clarity. “I was… alone in the student council room. Before summer break. And I found… a file with documents in Eichi’s handwriting. I was… curious about it. I wanted to know… what went on in his mind. I wanted to understand him… even if… only a little. And… in the file. Before he had finished choosing the Oddballs. ...He had written my name down as one of them.”

He delivers this revelation with perfect calm; as if, again, it’s something below him, not at all his concern. And maybe it is. Maybe, having watched the trolley of Tenshouin Eichi’s grand strategy divert and rattle along the other track, he can afford for it to be.

There’s something rising in Wataru; something he doesn’t know how to name, not quite anger and not quite sorrow. His answer is torn from him before he can think better of it. “Who wasn’t there?”

Nagisa cocks his head, golden eyes unchanging. “...Who wasn’t where?”

_ If your name was on the list of prospective Oddballs, one of ours wasn’t. Which one of us might have been spared? Natsume, Shu; Kanata, Rei? Which one of us might have been happy, now, in your place? _

But Wataru can’t bring himself to say that. He draws a perfectly controlled breath, the kind he practices in his warmups before a show, and forces himself to ask something else. “So? Why didn’t you make the cut in the end, hmm? I can’t imagine it was for lack of talent.”

“Hiyori… must have stepped in. I think… Eichi needed him on his side… more than he needed a fifth Oddball just yet.”

Of course. Of course it comes back to Tomoe Hiyori, and the strange, unbreakable relationship he has with Nagisa. And the fact that, for all Wataru’s fans, for all his friends, for everyone who might miss him if he were to be crushed under fine’s wheels, there’s nobody on this earth who’d protect him above everything else.

(He’s supposed to be the one doing the protecting, after all. Even if Natsume looks thinner every time they see each other, and speaks less, and stays in the secret room long after class has finished; and even if he can hardly bear to look at Hokuto, some days, knowing where this apprenticeship will lead him.)

“...Hibiki. I said something wrong.”

“No, not at all!” He’s been quiet for a long time; too long, and when he tries to wrestle this conversation back onto the rails, he comes off unbearably pitchy. He’s almost disappointed when his theatre training kicks in, and he manages to deliver his next words evenly. “How wonderful, for you to have a friend who loves you so fervently. That he would snatch you from the very jaws of death itself!”

Nagisa watches him. “You… don’t mean that.”

“I assure you, I most certainly do! I ardently mean every word I’ve ever spoken, even the ones I’ve spoken as men other than myself.”

“Oh. Was that… rude? I think I intended to say… you  _ can’t  _ mean that. That you can’t earnestly be happy for me, if you don’t have a friend like that yourself. Especially when I was saved, by that friend, and you… didn’t have the chance to be. Because… I’m not good with people. Not at all. But I know enough about others… to know that you should resent me. If not… for being your enemy… then for being saved, when you couldn’t be. And you should resent me… from the very bottom of your heart.”

That’s the most syllables Wataru has ever heard Nagisa say in a row. And, for someone who claims not to interact with others often, he’s certainly taken a fairly accurate stab at Wataru’s feelings.

Fairly accurate; but not wholly. “What would that achieve?”

Nagisa blinks. “Hm?”

“I said, what would it achieve if I did resent you? I’m  _ tired_, you know. Even I’ve been worn down by this war. And I don’t have the energy to waste on hating you, at so late a point, and for such an unproductive cause. If there’s anyone worthy of that, it’s Tenshouin Eichi.”

“And… do you hate him?”

Wataru sighs out a long, slow breath. “I don’t know.”

And that’s really all there is to say, isn’t it. Even if it’s a truth he doesn’t know if he’d meant to bare, a truth he wasn’t even sure he’d reached until this moment, it suddenly feels like the only truth there is. Trying to steer his thoughts away from that, Wataru signals to Ophelia; she flutters back to him, and perches in his hair. Nagisa drops his hands, uselessly, like he isn’t sure what to do with them. His throat works as he thinks.

“...I should apologise. But… I don’t think you’d accept it.”

“In all likelihood, probably not.”

“But… even so. If that’s true. If you really… haven’t come to hate me, despite everything.” Nagisa hunches into himself a little, gives Wataru a look that reads as almost nervous. “This is… more than I’ve spoken to almost anyone… in a long time. You’ll… come speak to me again, won’t you?”

In the sunshine, Nagisa’s hair is still pale as snow, his eyes a dappled amber. They might be the only two people left at Yumenosaki, this afternoon; they might be the only two people left on the planet, for as far away as Wataru feels from everyone he’s ever known. But he knows that can’t be true. That there are forces operating here, larger than either of them, which continue to move even if he’s turned away. That, even if Nagisa is interesting and well-meaning and kind to animals, Tenshouin Eichi’s war machine won’t stop for the sake of a stolen moment. For the sake of that dove-white profile, one afternoon in late summer.

“I don’t know that, either.”

“No. I… I understand.”

“But it’s true that I don’t hate you. No matter what else might come to pass, no matter where our paths might lead us. No matter when it is you and I will face off, as idols, for the sake of a glorious revolution. I think it might make me happy if you’d remember that.”

“Don’t worry,” Nagisa says. “I won’t let myself forget.”


End file.
